Last week, I showed you a turtle doing his thing while I was out biking — providing "his thing" means falling face-first off a log.

Not too long after that, a ways farther down the trail, I had an encounter with a much cuter critter.

That’s a prairie dog, and they’re very common around Boulder. They are about as adorable as you can imagine, even in the way they behave. They stand on their hind legs, chitter loudly, and run around like they’re starring in a Pixar cartoon.

On the other hand, they also are known to carry the plague. And by the plague, I mean the plague, Bubonic Plague. That’s one reason I try not to get too close to them. I watched "Holy Grail"; I know the score.

Colonies of them can have dozens of members, and watching them prance around and run from hole to hole is fun. Their noises are interesting; some folks think it may be a very rudimentary language. I remain agnostic on this, though of course skeptical, but they are a very gregarious and chatty animal.

We’ve been incredibly lucky so far that our intrusions into the rain forests haven’t exposed us to a highly communicable disease that is also 90 percent lethal(ebola Zaire is air born but ONLY 40 percent lethal). ,,,but luck has a tendency to run out,,,eventually,,,

Avoid all small critters. Like the virus that defeated the Martians, it’s the little critters that bite back the hardest.

basically any mammal that’s able to host the fleas (xenopsyllus cheopis) that host yersinia pestis can carry plague.

Then there’s hansen’s disease (leprosy) in armadillos

And Tularemia in bunnies

and rabies in just about any mammal you can think of.

I try to not worry to terribly much about getting disease from from critters through incidental contact. But I do have my vaccination against rabies (I used to work up close and personal with bats…and their teeth)

@Stuart R.
What you need is a overgrown cat.
(The lack of cats (due to superstition, something to do with witches etc.) was the main reason why the plague went so well in Europe.)

@josie
And don´t forget toxoplasmosis in cats. Which is awesome. Makes the rats not afraid of cats. It´s a nuisance in humans though when they pick it up in the womb. Tends to blind them later in life. Oh and they can carry rabies too.

“I used to work up close and personal with bats…and their teeth”
What were you trying to prove?

I don’t know what you’re asking actually. I was working with a museum collecting Neotropical mammals, especially bats. Museum collections are essential for understanding biodiversity, life history and conservation needs for many species –and not just charismatic megafauna like mammals and birds. The research that I and others did as a result of the collections is varied.

As far as proving something it’s not like I was on Fear Factor trying to kiss bats without getting my lips bitten off. Part of collecting bats is capturing them in mist nets and then removing them –they tend to squirm and try to nom fingers. If you don’t hold them correctly they will land some pretty good bites.

And if you think birds are easier, large finches can put a hurt on you too even without benefit of teeth. And then of course there are the occasional raptors that will get into the nets. For those guys I suggest taking off your outer shirt to neutralize the talons before disentangling the animal.

Yes your friend is cute. However, right now I’m not into cute because we have a pack rat in the garage. He scattered my tomato plants and we had to hunt them down. He keeps eating the bait out of the trap, knocks everything off the workbench and dumped over my husband’s mug of lemonade. I mean, why the hell can’t Mr. Rat be outside? It’s gorgeous outside right now. And what the hell did I ever do to him, for cripe’s sake.

No, it was not mainly the “lack of cats in Europe” that led to the Black Death (re @9). Also the reference under @8 is full of misinformation — Y. pestis does NOT “turn into a virus”. To keep this in perspective, there are only 10-20 cases on average per year in the US of bubonic plague; only 1 in 7 are fatal. The reasons for the severity of the Black Death in medieval Europe (and elsewhere) are more complex but probably have to do chiefly with 1) human ectoparasites that could transfer the pathogen from one host to the next and 2) pneumonic form of the disease spreading concurrent with bubonic & septicemic forms.

I can’t understand why Boulder doesn’t have an annual hunt and BBQ to keep the prarie dog population under control. When you ecosystem is no longer natural, it becomes man’s duty to control it – like the deer in Scotland, for example.

Well despite Stuart here not liking them, prairie dogs are an important keystone species of the Great Plains.

From Wikipedia:

“The prairie dog is also an ecosystem engineer. Prairie dog burrows provide the nesting areas for Mountain Plovers and Burrowing Owls. Prairie dog tunnel systems also help channel rainwater into the water table to prevent runoff and erosion, and can also serve to change the composition of the soil in a region by increasing aeration and reversing soil compaction that can be a result of cattle grazing. Prairie dogs also trim the vegetation around their colonies, perhaps to remove any cover for predators.[16] Even grazing species such as Plains bison, pronghorn, and Mule deer have shown a proclivity for grazing on the same land used by prairie dogs.[17] It is believed that they prefer the vegetative conditions after prairie dogs have foraged through the area.”

Bit funny. We work our butts off to kill of all kinda germs here on earth. But when you talk about Mars, suddenly people start to talk about ethics when it comes to terra forming and the possible consequences for bugs and germs.
[/2€cents]

@22 bassmanpete – I agree with you about habitat and all that. Around here, ground squirrels’ burrows are homes for burrowing owls, which have to be one of the cutest things on the planet. As a side bar, some years ago I had a critter eating leaves off a small shrub in a flower bed. He piled leaves on the pathway, so I was on the lookout for – whatever. I found him finally, silvery gray with a brushy tail and I caught him in a stack of pavers. He was too pretty to kill with the pitchfork so I drenched him with the hose.

Fish and Game said it was a “bushy tailed wood rat” or a pack rat. He left our yard, got in the neighbor’s doggie door, fought with their cats and trashed their kitchen. They used a hav-a-heart trap and took him to the river.

My ex-wife had a pet prairie dog. Very cute, and very protective of it’s “family.” She had it before we started dating, and it would go nuts trying to attack me through it’s cage. But it got used to me. It really was a great little pet. At the same time, I know they are a pest in many areas, so I understand peoples attitudes about them.

There is no such word as “virii”. “Virus” has no plural in Latin (even if it had one, it wouldn’t be “virii”, which is as ridiculous as “sheepses” is in English), and has only one plural in English, “viruses”.